Smilodon fatalis

[Spalea]

@Sanju :

About #45: Quite interesting, and exciting too, your post ! We can therefore think that the smilodon fatalis lived like the extant wolves, because the young needed a longer learning period than modern lions in order to "master their anatomy" : how to use their fangs advisedly. Therefore the females needed to be more robust to stand them. Thus too, differences between males and females were not so great, weak sexual dimorphism...

But contrary to the modern wolves, conflicts between members of the pride could happen much more often (very numerous lesions among the smilodon fatalis' bones). I would say, socially speaking, that they weren't more evolved than the extant lions. The weaker dimorphism between males and females being conditionned by the longer period of the young smilodon within the parental pride. One question: did the alpha males expell, like the extant male lions, the young males having finished their "learning period" ? If yes, the life of the young males having to establish a new pride owed be very hard too. Inside a foreign and hostile territory they had to fear as much the females as the males reigning over this territory.

Definitely carnivors' life had to be very intense and difficult during the Pleistocene. The Pleistocene becoming, IMO, more and more a very fascinating period. Reply